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The Former Premier Who Ended China's 'Splendid Isolation'

Some call Zhu Rongji, China's just-retired prime minister, a visionary who transformed China into a modern market economy. Others say he is a two-faced braggart who bungled a chance to tackle pressing economic and social problems.

Good or bad, everyone seems to have an opinion about Mr. Zhu, the former Shanghai mayor who served as China's de facto economic czar for nearly a decade until this week, when he was succeeded by his deputy, Wen Jiabao.

Mr. Zhu, 74, appealed to ordinary Chinese because he mastered the art of popular politics. In a nation accustomed to leaders who never deviate from scripts and slogans, he had a gift for extemporaneous speaking, a sardonic sense of humor and a prodigious memory for names and faces.

Chinese watched mesmerized as he jousted verbally with former President Bill Clinton during a televised news conference in 1999, and the former American treasury secretary, Lawrence H. Summers, often reserved in assessing other financial leaders, called Mr. Zhu ''brilliant.''

At home, though, Mr. Zhu did not always master the politics of the Communist Party. He promised dramatic change and delivered only incremental advances. He exploded at senior ministers who did not follow orders. By the end of his term, China's establishment had grown weary of his antics.

He was tapped to run China's economy in 1993, when the paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, brought him to Beijing from Shanghai. Mr. Deng said that Mr. Zhu ''gets economics.'' By most accounts, he did. He tamed the rampant inflation of the early 1990's. He overhauled the currency system. He implemented sweeping tax reform that created a revenue bonanza for the central government.

When Asia was gripped by financial panic in 1997, Mr. Zhu used Keynesian-style spending to keep the economy growing quickly. By 2002, China had become the world's sixth largest economy and attracted more foreign investment than any other country.

His most lasting legacy may be arranging entry into the World Trade Organization, which required a certain amount of political bullying. Mr. Zhu almost lost his job because of a backlash against the concessions he made to United States and other countries. But membership in the trade body is now seen as a milestone.

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Fred Hu, chief China economist for Goldman Sachs, said Mr. Zhu knew all along that entry into the W.T.O. was about much more than cutting tariffs. ''It was a revolution in national outlook, ending the Middle Kingdom's centuries-old penchant for splendid isolation,'' Mr. Hu wrote in an opinion article for the Asian Wall Street Journal.

But detractors say that Mr. Zhu had another side. He had great faith in his ability to micromanage the economy. As a result, they say, he never completed the promised transition from central planning to a market economy. The banking system is still hobbled by bad loans to state enterprises and state projects that Mr. Zhu championed.

Mr. Zhu vowed publicly in 1998 that he would turn around money-losing state companies within three years. Although perhaps 30 million workers were laid off, tens of millions of surplus workers are still paid by state companies that make things no one wants to buy. China still has no national welfare system to care for the unemployed.

In his farewell speech to China's Parliament, Mr. Zhu acknowledged that he had failed to address growing income inequality between urban residents and farmers, calling it ''one of our biggest shortcomings.'' Admitting his errors set him apart from other Chinese leaders, but it also gave fuel to his critics.

''If you look at the things he promised to do five years ago, not one has truly been realized,'' Kang Xiaoguang, a political scientist at the Chinese Academy of Science, said.

Mr. Zhu has blamed the bureaucracy and the party hierarchy for his failure to accomplish more. But China is a one-party state, and Mr. Zhu ran the government.